On October 1, 2015, Karen B. DeSalvo, MD HHS National Coordinator for HIT www.healthit.gov appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee www.help.senate.gov on the progress health IT is accomplishing today and plans for the future.
According to Dr. DeSalvo, ONC in the very near future is going to release the final streamlined Version 1.0 of the “Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap.” The final 1.0 version will focus primarily on impactful near-term actions that will be taken by the end of 2017.
HHS with other partners developed the “Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020 with over 35 Federal entities. The plan is designed to support the Precision Medicine Initiative, the Department of Defense’s Military Health System’s acquisition of a new health IT system, as well as FDA’s Sentinel program.
In addition to working with other stakeholders, collaboration will continue to be ongoing with the HHS Office for Civil Rights www.hhs.gov/ocr, FDA www.fda.gov, and the FTC www.ftc.gov to improve security in health IT and to assist consumers so they can understand security risk issues.
Dr. DeSalvo mentioned how important it is to establish a governance mechanism for the use of technology. For example, a governance mechanism would ensure that those participating in the exchange and interoperability of health information would be held accountable for their actions.
There is also a need to improve transparency in the market so that providers would be able to make more informed purchasing decisions if they had a better sense of costs, capabilities, limitations, and other performance characteristics of certified health IT.
Lastly, prohibiting information blocking and associated business practices by providers, suppliers, and vendors of health IT certified under programs recognized by the National Coordinator would prevent unnecessary impediments to the use of health IT.
Summing up, she told the Committee, “ONC is also committed to promoting the use of health IT to encourage information exchange, not only across HHS and government-wide, but also with all stakeholders, and hopes that Congress will legislate in this area, so that these actions could further help health IT reach its full potential.”